


Standard Operating Procedure

by keysmash



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: spnthreesome, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, F/M, Multi, Threesome, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-04
Updated: 2010-11-04
Packaged: 2017-10-13 01:46:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/131444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keysmash/pseuds/keysmash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jess doesn't really know where they're heading, but the three of them are driving east.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Standard Operating Procedure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wutendeskind](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wutendeskind/gifts).



> Written for wutendeskind, for the spnthreesome exchange. Beta by chemm80. Spoilers for the Pilot and The Devil You Know.

Dean says they're headed to South Dakota.

Jess doesn't know what's in South Dakota, other than the Badlands. Her parents took her there the year they went to Yellowstone, a slow trip punctuated by the occasional scenic turn-off, but the Badlands had been the highlight of her trip, the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. She hopes that's not where they're going now, though; she hopes Dean has a better plan than hiding out at one national park out of many. He won't tell her exactly where they are going, and so Jess is left to imagine things. A hide-out? A hospital? A relative's house? She doesn't know.

Dean's alone in the front seat, with the junk that had been in the back piled next to him, and Jess is in the back, pressed up against the right window, with Sam's head in her lap. He's breathing, at least, and a few times he's woken up enough to ask for water, but Jess doesn't know how he's doing, other than that. The burn on his arm looks like it needs more than the ointment and bandage Dean gave it, but she doesn't know any first aid, really, and she'd deferred to the giant and scary kit of supplies he pulled from the trunk, and the ease with which he used them.

"You should get some sleep," Dean says. Jess looks at him and he's watching her in the rear-view mirror. There are deep shadows under his eyes, and she smiles a little. It's like her face moves without her permission.

"You should, too."

He huffs. "Someone's gotta keep us on the road." There's a pause, as the tape moves from one song to the next, and then he speaks again. "You can drive, right?"

Jess looks out the window, at the lights smudging past in the dark. "Yeah," she says. Her leg is numb, and has been for a while, but she combs one hand through his hair anyway. It's not tangled at all.

"Okay, so, how about you rest now, and then we can switch in a few hours," Dean offers. He glances over his shoulder, but she doesn't look at him.

"Alright," she says, even though she hasn't been able to sleep since they left. She's tried, and it's never worked. But she closes her eyes and tips her forehead against the window anyway. She can feel the road vibrating in her skull, behind her eyes, and she tries very hard not to think about anything else.

.

 _Dean made her give him her cell phone before they left town. Jess had passed it over without asking why, and she'd gone through Sam's pockets to find his, to give to Dean as well._

He turned both phones off and tossed hers in the back of someone's pickup, then turned around and drove for another mile before throwing Sam's into the back of a delivery truck parked by the side of the road, with the door open. Dean put his own phone in the glove box and took out another, to put in his lap. Jess leaned over the seat and saw what looked like an entire collection of wallets in the glove box. Maybe Dean was a thief. Great. Sam had started making noise then, whimpering into her thigh, and Jess smoothed her hands over his forehead. She knew there wasn't really time to stop.

"Why'd you throw them out?" she'd asked, looking at Sam instead of at Dean. Sam's mouth was open and his face was dirty around the edges, almost charred. His hair smelled bad. Jess bit her lip and tried not to jostle him.

"They can be traced," he said. "And it's better if they're being traced in different directions than where we're actually going."

Jess had swallowed hard. That was the first time she'd wanted to cry. "You've done this before?"

Dean turned around and looked at her. She met his gaze that time, and he grinned, shrugged, said, "I watch a lot of cop shows."

She'd looked back down at Sam, wondering if Sam had done this before, too. Maybe his dad hadn't just been a jerk; maybe there was a real reason he never talked about his family.

.

She's not asleep when they pull off the road, but she'd been dozing, and making herself sit up and open her eyes is as hard as getting out of bed ever was.

They're at a gas station, parked at the pump furthest from the building. Dean gets out and fills up the tank, and Jess looks down at Sam's face, now that there's some light. His brow is still wrinkled and he's clammy under her hands, but his breathing is steady. Jess ducks to kiss his forehead and then straightens, staring ahead. She could use some sleep spread out in a bed, but she does feel more rested now, and it's better.

She jumps when Dean taps on her window.

"How's he doing?" he asks when she opens the door to talk to him, kneeling down and brushing Sam's hair back from his forehead with long, steady fingers.

"I think better," she says. "He's quieter, at least. And he's easy to wake up, when I check him."

"Good." Dean touches the side of Sam's face, his chest, and then pulls his hands away. He looks up at Jess. "You think you can drive for a while? I need to crash some, and I don't want to actually crash."

She looks down at Sam, then back to Dean, and the lines around his eyes. "Yeah," she says.

"Here, I'll take your place," Dean says. He slides his hand under the back of Sam's neck, rubbing against her thigh, and he holds Sam's head up while Jess slides out from under him. Her leg aches as the blood flows back into place, and the rest of her body is pretty stiff, too. She holds onto the side of the car and breathes while Dean sits, getting Sam in his lap, and then goes around the car. The gas pump shuts off automatically and she takes the nozzle out of the tank, then screw the lid shut and gets into the car.

She sits forward slightly into order to reach the pedals, and none of the mirrors are angled to where she can see. She adjusts everything and pulls away from the pump, back onto the access road.

"Where are we even going?" she asks.

"Get back on the freeway." Dean points towards the entrance ramp. "We're on I-80, just got into Utah. Keep going east, and wake me up an hour into Wyoming, if I'm not up by then."

Jess nods and merges into the lane she needs. There's a red light, and she turns to look at Sam while she waits. He's in Dean's lap the same way he'd been in hers, and his face is turned away from her, but his chest is rising and falling evenly. She looks up and finds Dean is already asleep against the window.

She could drive someplace else. Turn around and go back to school, and try to explain why things looked the way they did, or maybe go further south and go home, to her parent's house. They'd only met Sam once, but she thought they'd take him in, and —

And then what? Jess doesn't know what to do here, and they had cut and run before she could go through the proper channels. She gets on the freeway and keeps driving, going east.

.

 _"Five minutes," Dean had said, almost snapping at her. "Get dressed and grab what you can't leave behind, but we've gotta go."_

Jess watched him get Sam onto the living room couch, wrestling with his burnt clothes, and when the shirt was gone, Dean cursed loudly before going into the kitchen. She watched Dean go and then crossed the room to Sam's side. It felt like she was moving slowly, walking through water or in a dream, but she could see Sam clearly enough — his face screwed up, and his pulse beating visibly in his throat, and a burn stretching across one entire arm.

Dean came back out with two packages of frozen mixed vegetables and put them onto Sam, holding him down when he cried out and tried to sit up.

"Jess," he said. He turned over his shoulder to look at her, but she was focused entirely on Sam, and wouldn't glance away from him. "Look at me, hey."

She shook her head and Dean moved into her line of sight, putting his face between hers and Sam's.

"Jess," he repeated, and she shook her head again before focusing on him. "I know this is fucked up, but Sam's alright. And the three of us are all going to be alright, but you need to move fast. Go get dressed, and I'll come help you with the rest."

She shook her head one more time, wanting to keep Sam where she could see him, but somehow she found herself turning and walking back into their room. She kept her eyes on her feet until she got to the closet and then pulled off her smoky clothes, letting them fall to the ground. She put on the closest pair of her jeans she could find, and a Student Housing tee shirt she'd gotten the day she moved into the dorms freshman year, and then she stopped. She was staring down at her pile of shoes when Dean joined her, making lots of noise on the way.

"Which ones?" she'd asked, not looking up at him.

"Are they good boots?" he asked in return, and nudged her motorcycle boots with one toe. She nodded, and he said, "Them."

While she put them on, sitting down in front of the closet like a child, he asked her where she kept her purse, and where the computers were, and if she took any medicine on a daily basis, and if they kept cash anyplace, and where her good jewelry was, and if Sam had a trunk or a box or anything weird he didn't like her to look at, and when they'd last done the laundry, and if she had a duffel bag.

She'd looked up at that, and found him standing by the bed, taking clothes indiscriminately from the basket that held their most recent clean load and stuffing them into a pair of bags.

"You want us to run?" she asked, frowning.

"As far as the cops are concerned, none of this looks good for us. Yeah, we're running." He reached the bottom of the basket and zipped one bag up, then took the other with him into the bathroom. "Go get all the non-perishables out of the kitchen, will you?"

Jess stared at the bag on the bed for a moment, then stood up and headed for the kitchen, carefully not looking around the room as she left it.

.

 _Singer Salvage_ , says the sign. There are rows and rows of cars, some still shining but most covered with a fuzzy layer of rust, and Dean takes them slowly around to a house, off one side of the lot. Jess knows how much coffee he's had to drink since he woke up but his hands are steady on the wheel, and he drives them right up to the front porch. He taps the horn a few times and a dog barks somewhere, but no one comes out.

Dean frowns, then turns off the engine. He leans over the seat and puts a hand on Sam's knee, shaking him gently.

"Sammy," he says. Sam makes a noise, almost humming, and Dean repeats himself. "Sammy, wake up for a little bit. We're at Bobby's, man, c'mon, let's get you inside."

Sam sighs into Jess's lap but then rolls onto his back and opens his eyes. He looks at her first, then turns to find Dean. "Bobby's?"

Dean nods. "Yeah, man. I think he's out working on something, I couldn't get a hold of him, but we'll hang out here for a while. Get you all patched up."

Sam closes his eyes for a moment and turns his face back towards Jess's belly, but he sits up carefully before anyone else says anything. Jess gets her arm around his shoulders as he goes, and Dean clasps Sam's hand, and then he's sitting upright, holding onto the front seat and looking around.

"You have a key?" he asks, sounding surprised.

Dean raises an eyebrow, giving Sam a look. "Do I need one?"

Sam shrugs. "Alright, what are we waiting for?"

Dean goes up to the door by himself, leaving Sam and Jess in the back seat. They're mostly the same height sitting down and she keeps her arm around him, letting him lean back against her instead of the car. They watch Dean for a while, then Sam turns and kisses her. She can see that his eyes are shut, and she closes her own as well. His mouth is stale from too much sleep over the past few days, but Jess has to keep herself from trying to climb into his lap, and wrap her arms all around him.

"You doing okay?" he asks, talking into her mouth, and Jess laughs back into his.

"I don't even know how to start answering that," she says, and then pulls back enough to look at him. His jaw is dark with stubble and there are bags under his eyes, despite how much he's been sleeping. She guesses it hasn't been very restful. He's cradling his arm against himself and his face is still dirty. "Is this — Sam, I'm trying really hard not to freak out here, but I have no idea what's going on."

"I know." He glances towards the door, which is now open although Dean seems to have disappeared inside. "There's, uh, a lot about my family I haven't told you. And I know I need to, but for right now, this is our friend Bobby's place. Bobby Singer. We're gonna be cool to hang out here for a while, until we get things figured out."

Jess closes her eyes and presses the heels of her palms into her eye sockets, and she stays that way until Sam nudges her.

"Let's go inside," he says.

She looks behind them, at the tiny strip of road she can barely see through all the cars, and then follows Sam into the house.

.

 _"Hey Brady," she'd said, when she opened the door — a little surprised to see him, because he hadn't called, but Brady just dropped by sometimes, so she didn't think very hard about it. "Sam's out of town this weekend, if you wanted to see him."_

"Actually," he'd said, leaning his arm against the doorjamb and smiling at her, "I'm here to see you."

"Oh." She laughed and stepped back, letting him inside. "Come on in, then."

"You didn't get bored by yourself with Sam out of town, did you?" He'd followed her inside, and through to the kitchen when she headed back.

"Nah, I got caught up on all my work." Jess checked the kitchen timer, then peered through the oven door at the trays of almost-done cookies inside. "It was actually pretty good, you know? I'm pretty much set for everything until finals roll around."

"Awesome," Brady said. "Man, what are you baking? Those smell delicious."

"Cookies," she said. "They need like ninety more seconds, but do you want one after that?"

"Does a bear shit in the woods?" He leaned against the counter opposite her, laughing. "Hell, I'd probably eat real bear shit if it smelled that way."

"Good thing for all of us it doesn't, I guess." She picked up the oven mitts and stood beside him, while they watched the oven. "So what's been up with you recently? We haven't gotten together in a while."

Brady'd sighed. "Yeah, tell me about it. I've just got this killer deadline coming up, and I've been trying to get everything ready for it."

"For class?"

"No, for after school," he said. Jess frowned at him, and he laughed and waved a hand at her. "I know, that's vague. I just haven't wanted to talk about it until it's all done."

"I get that."

The timer dinged then, and Jess slid her hands into the mitts, then opened the oven. The hot air wafted out at her and she leaned back for just a second before taking out both trays: the cookies had glistened, the chocolate chips shining with the heat. Jess smiled and put them on the stove, then toed the oven door carefully shut. She turned off the heat and put the mitts away, and when she turned back to the oven, found Brady with a cookie in hand, blowing on it before taking a bite.

"You're going to burn yourself," she said, and smacked him on the belly.

Brady'd just laughed and licked his lips. "Sometimes it's worth it," he said.

.

It's the strangest house she's ever been in, something out of a movie set. There's clutter everywhere, most of it books in tall, unsteady stacks, and none of the furniture is either new or clean. Some of it is under tarps, instead of clear plastic covers. She follows Dean and Sam, who know where they're going, and every room has at least one weapon in it. There are strange things carved in the walls, and painted on the ceilings and the floors. The two of them are obviously relieved to be here, moving with none of the nervous tension Jess saw every time they stopped for gas or food or to use the bathroom, but she wraps her arms around herself. The car had been better than this.

"You find anything about where he is?" Sam asks, as they go into a large bedroom. Jess guesses it's supposed to be part of a master suite, based on the bathroom she can see through one open door, but there are two queen beds pushed against one wall, and a bunk bed against another. Less guest room and more dormitory, motel.

Dean shakes his head, then pulls tarps off the queens one by one. It sends dust up into the air, but the mattresses are bare. She stands next to Sam's good arm, which he wraps around her, and they watch Dean open a cabinet and pull out two mismatched sets of sheets.

"Can you help me with these?" he asks, looking at Jess and holding one stack of linens out to her. Jess nods after a moment and takes them, working on the bed closest to her while Dean makes up the other.

When she finishes, she looks from Sam to the bed. "You should rest."

"I've been resting," he says, but Dean clears his throat from across the room and Sam rolls his eyes before moving to the bed. He gets on it, not in it, and sits against the headboard instead of lying down, but it's better than nothing. After a moment, Jess sits as well, perching at the foot of the bed. She wraps her arms around herself again, then looks from Sam to Dean.

"Look, I've come all this way with you because I didn't know what else to do, but I feel like I'm going crazy," she said. "You seriously have to tell me what the fuck is going on."

Sam glances at Dean, who raises his eyebrows and nods, and then looks back to Jess. "Alright. What did Dean tell you while I was out?"

She hesitates, then asks Dean, "Why don't you just tell him?"

Sam answers, and his voice is soft, the way he talks to her before they go to sleep: "I already know what Dean knows. I want you to tell me what you know."

"He said Brady was a demon," Jess said in a rush, looking at the faded, striped sheets. "He said he was a demon, which doesn't make any sense, and that he said that demons were real, and that your family —" She stops, because she's had a while to think about it, and it's just, it's ridiculous, it can't be true.

But Brady had — she'd been up on the ceiling somehow, and that couldn't be true, either. Except that it'd happened.

"He said your family hunts them or something," she finishes, and looks at Sam with her eyebrows raised.

He nods, though, instead of denying it, or giving her some other explanation. "That's the SparkNotes version of it, yeah."

Jess laughs, because she doesn't know what else to do, and Dean comes to sit on the other bed while they tell her more stupid, crazy things.

.

 _She looked back, and it was easy to see: the bags of salt he kept on the top shelf in the pantry, saying he'd found a good deal at Big Lots and thought they should stock up. The set of iron fireplace tools he bought even though they didn't have a fireplace. The rosary in the top drawer of his bedside table when she knew he wasn't Catholic. The set of good knives he insisted they splurge for, the way he got her in the habit of always locking the door, the strange designs he doodled in the margins of his notes._

Then there were all the scars he hadn't explained to her, and how lightly he slept, and how he worked out but never in a gym. The pages and pages he attached to all his scholarship and grant applications, for the sections that said, "List all former addresses." The way he never talked about his family unless she asked, and then, only in generalities.

Looking back, yeah, there was an awful lot.

.

Sam's asleep when Jess gets out of the shower. She stands over him for a moment, looking down at his pinched, pale face, and then the drafts get to be too much on her damp skin, and she dresses. Her bag and Sam's are just inside the room, and she finds a clean pair of jeans, one of Sam's tee shirts, and one of her own sweaters. They smell familiar, store-brand laundry detergent, and Jess holds the fabric up to her nose for a moment, closing her eyes and breathing in deep, before zipping her duffel back up and piling her hair on top of her head.

She doesn't really remember her way around the house, but it's laid out well enough, and she looks into each room as she passes through, trying to get a sense for what's where. It's not quiet — the dogs are someplace outside, and the wind is noisy, and they're far from the road, but still close enough Jess can hear passing traffic — but there's someone making noise in the house, and she walks quietly until she finds a kitchen, where Dean's watching two pots on the stove.

"Hey," he says, glancing up at her. "You find everything okay?"

Jess shrugs. "Alright, I guess."

Dean nods. "Are you hungry? I'm heating up some soup, and then macaroni to go into it, if you are."

"Yeah," Jess says. She's startled to find that she is hungry, almost as if she only noticed the fact once she talked about it. "Do you need help?"

"See if you can find some bowls, how about," Dean says. "I think they're above the sink, but we haven't been here in a while."

The bowls are actually next to the dishwasher, but Jess takes out three, and then goes looking for spoons and napkins. (Napkins aren't anyplace to be found, but spoons are easy enough, in a drawer with other mismatched silverware.) She lays it all out on the counter next to the stove, and then stays there, watching the pots. Dean has a spoon in each hand, stirring them both counterclockwise. His hands are relaxed around the handles, fingers loose as they hold them, but he's moving easily, each hand going a different speed, like he's used to cooking.

"You doing alright?" he asks, and looks at her.

Jess snorts and doesn't meet his gaze. "You both keep asking me that. It's like you expect me to freak out or something."

"It was a big thing," Dean says, and shrugs. "We're used to people freaking out a little."

"But I haven't," she says. "Not since we got on the road."

"Not that I've noticed," he agrees. He takes a bowl from the stack, brushing his fingers against hers for a moment, and pours soup into it directly from the pot, then scoops in some macaroni from a slotted spoon. "Maybe you've just been keeping it to yourself."

Dean offers her the bowl, and their hands touch again as she takes it, holding it close to her body. She looks back at Dean when he glances at her this time, and she sees the resemblance to Sam in his expression more than in the basic arrangement of their features. Sam's looked at her this way before, when he thought she was upset.

"Easier that way," she says, and holds the bowl in one hand as she gets a spoon with the other. Dean dishes up his own bowl, then turns around and leans against the counter next to her, so that their sides are touching. Jess glances sideways at him, but he just starts eating.

"Sometimes it is," he says, in between bites.

Jess eats as well. She doesn't scoot away from him.

.

 _They'd been eating cookies, she and Brady, and then she went into the bedroom to get a book he wanted to borrow, and then he'd followed her in, and had done — something, it hadn't made any sense. Jess had been pinned to the wall, paperback at her feet, unable to move, and then she went up somehow, sliding onto the ceiling as she started hyperventilating. The_ ceiling _, looking down at the room, and their bed seemed smaller, all their furniture cluttered, and Jess couldn't move her limbs, much less struggle enough to get herself down._

Down, off the ceiling. She was on the ceiling. This wasn't fucking Mary Poppins, wasn't Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and this shouldn't even be a problem, she —

She couldn't talk, could barely draw breath, but she could still move her eyes, and she saw Brady standing in the doorway to the closet, holding one hand out towards her, saw Brady smiling at her, showing too many teeth. His eyes were black somehow, probably a trick of the light, or the weird angle, but it made her want him to look away, to get his gaze off of her body.

"Just a little bit longer," he said, cocking his head away from her, towards the rest of the apartment. "Sam should be back in a second, and then it'll be over." He looked at her again and frowned. "Presentation leaves something to be desired though, babe. You don't have some skimpy nightgown you could have put on?"

She couldn't answer, couldn't do anything but stare at him and keep trying to struggle. He laughed, and started to say something else, and then Jess heard the rumble of Dean's car in the street, the slam of a car door.

"Well, too late now," he said, and planted his feet, squared his shoulders. Jess could see the part in his hair, and she looked away from him, down towards their bed — unmade, because she hated making it, and with all the pillows on the same side of the mattress, because she'd slept wrapped around Sam's while he was gone. She felt her heartbeat in her pulse, heard it over the small, jerky breaths she could take, and she was on the ceiling _, on the ceiling._

The door opened and closed, and Brady stepped back into the shadows of their clothes. Sam called her name. She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to know what came next but not thinking it could be anything good.

Sam called for her again, but it was more of a yell this time, coming from inside the room, and she opened her eyes to find him barging in, a — a gun in one hand. She thought she heard Brady mutter, "Shit," before the ceiling caught on fire around her, so hot that she had to close her eyes again, so loud she wanted to cover her ears. It was close, and surely it would kill her, flames she couldn't escape, no matter how she tried to jerk away from it.

And then someone grabbed her around the waist, digging into her sides and pulling at her painfully, until something gave and she crashed on top of them, out of the fire and back into gravity.

"Jess, Jess, baby, no, look at me," Sam was saying, shaking her shoulders, and she opened her eyes to find him underneath her, with his eyes wide and smoke all around them. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she said, even though she hadn't really been sure, and then Sam squirmed out from under her and stumbled towards the closet, where she saw Dean and Brady, both trying to land blows on the other. Brady seemed to be winning.

"In the coat," Dean said, and Jess watched as Sam fumbled around in his leather jacket before coming up with a worn book, flipping through it before starting to talk, something not in English. Brady threw back his head and hissed, and Jess scooted back against the headboard, able to cover her ears now.

.

Sam's leaning against the headboard when Jess goes to find him again. He's not wearing a shirt and his hair is damp. The bandage is dry, at least. He looks up at Jess when she stands in the doorway and smiles, then pats the bed next to him.

She goes. He kisses the crown of her head but doesn't say anything, and Jess looks around the room. He's lined their bags up on the bottom bunk; his is zipped closed, but hers is open, the way she left it.

"Dean made you some soup," she says. "You're probably hungry. I don't really remember when you ate last."

"Neither do I," he says, and laughs. Jess glances at him, grinning, and leans into him, on his good side. "Is it in the kitchen?"

She nods. "I can bring you a bowl, if you want."

"Beat you to it," Dean says, toeing the door further open and coming on in. He has a bowl in one hand, and a package of crackers balanced on top a glass of water in the other. "C'mon, sit up better and you can eat it right there."

Sam grumbles but he pushes himself further up, and takes the bowl when Dean offers it. It's not steaming, the way Jess's was in the kitchen.

Dean settles down at the foot of the bed while he and Jess both watch him eat. Sam raises an eyebrow at them, but he barrels through the soup, and moves onto the crackers before he says anything about it. "I can't actually be the best entertainment in the house, guys. I know Bobby's got a TV somewhere."

"It's busted," Dean says, and Jess laughs. They all laugh, Sam with a mouthful of crackers that get slightly sprayed over the sheets, and Jess shakes her head.

"You would bring him crackers to eat in bed," she says to Dean.

"Yeah, and it's too bad there aren't any other places to sleep in here," he says, all serious round eyes above his stubble, and the smirk he isn't quite keeping at bay.

"Where are you sleeping?" Sam asks, in between bites.

"Right here," Dean says. Jess gets that he probably means _right here in this room_ , but he doesn't actually say that, or point at the other bed, or anything like that. He does look from Sam to Jess, and hold her gaze for a moment, and she can feel herself blushing a little. With her hair put up, she can't hide behind her curls, so she just looks back at him, until he grins and looks away.

.

 _She tried not to watch, but it was hard: the three of them went tumbling around the bedroom, Sam and Dean taking turns trying to get their hands on Brady, and Brady lashing out with more strength than she'd expected of him. They crashed into the dresser. It knocked off her earring tree and the books she'd read the previous month and Sam's picture of his parents. The three of them almost fell into the bathroom, but wound up rebounding towards the wall instead. The drywall dented under Brady's head and Jess heard herself scream distantly._

She looked away from them and towards the door — the path was clear, and if she could get there, she could probably get outside, away. She'd scrambled halfway off the bed when she heard Sam calling for her, yelling her name over and over.

She looked over and found him on his knees, leaning down on something. His face was bleeding and he was yelling at her, pleading.

"What?" she called back.

"The crucifix!" he yelled. "From the bedside table, get it for me!"

It didn't make any sense, but she found herself standing in front of the table somehow, going through his things with shaking fingers. Bottle of lube, and a flashlight, and a box of raisins, what the fuck, and then there was the strand of beads, under pad of Post-Its. She grabbed it on her third try and tossed it in Sam's general direction, not wanting to go closer. Dean snatched it out of the air and his eyes locked on Jess's for a moment: he wasn't calm, but he was steady, standing tall with a gun and that leather book in one hand, and now the rosary in the other. He smiled at her, just barely, and then leaned over Sam, and dropped the rosary next to whatever Sam was leaning on.

There was a strangled noise that Jess guessed, after it stopped, must have come from Brady, but it had hardly sounded human. She crossed her arms around herself and backed up, almost getting into the closet, without really thinking about it.

Dean started talking, again not in English, and the noises started up again, more like howls than speech. They got louder and louder, and Jess saw Dean shoot a worried look at the wall that backed up to their neighbor's place, but he kept talking, getting louder as well.

Finally, he stopped reading. He was smiling for some reason, and Jess didn't know why until he and Sam both moved back, Sam practically leaping away from Brady. Jess thought there was another fire somehow, because smoke billowed up and up from the floor, and she ran across the room to grab at Sam. She was trying to pull him away, because they needed to get out, but he shook his head, unmovable and looking down, just like his brother. Jess looked, too, and she wished she hadn't, but she couldn't turn away: the smoke was coming from inside Brady somehow, like he'd eaten fire and rotten eggs and was vomiting it up — up _again, up into the room and out the window. It lasted and lasted, and Jess couldn't get away, could only watch._

The room was very quiet when it stopped. She saw immediately that Brady was too still, and then Sam swayed before falling heavily against her. Jess caught him, and finally got a good look at him. His arm was hurt, burnt underneath his shirt, and his face covered in blood, coming from above his hairline, and his eyelids were fluttering.

"Sammy?" Dean said sharply, and put his arm around Sam as well, so that, between the two of them, they could get him upright.

Someone pounded on the wall, the angry sound of a fist, and then he — Jess couldn't tell if it was Joey or Raul — yelled, "We called the cops, you assholes, now stop it already!"

"Shit," Dean said, and leaned around Sam to look at Jess. "We've gotta get moving, babe."

.

She wakes up, and it's good to get out of the dream, but not much better. Jess has no idea where the fuck she is, or how she got there. She tries to sit up but someone's holding onto her, arm wrapped around her waist. She pushes at them and they hiss, pulling the arm back, and when Jess scrambles away, onto the other side of the bed, a light turns on. She glances around wildly, squeezing her eyes most of the way closed, but then she sees: Dean standing by the bathroom doorway, wearing only boxers and looking sleep-ruffled, with his hair standing up.

"Fuck," she says, and lies back down, pressing the heels of her hands into her eye sockets.

"You want me to leave it on?" Dean asks. His voice is rough, like he's definitely been sleeping, but he sounds like it's a serious question, like it's not mocking.

Jess moves one hand away, looks at the silhouette of him standing in front of the light, and then nods. "Yeah."

He does, leaving the door open as well, and then gets back in his own bed. They're set close together, so Jess could lie on the very edge of hers and touch his, if she stretched.

Dean scoots to the side closest to her. "You doing okay?"

Jess sort of shrugs and shakes her head at the same time. "I don't even think I woke Sam up," she says instead. "You must've given him the good stuff."

"Nasty burn," Dean says. Jess winces; she probably shoved him right on the burn when she pushed him away.

She looks over her shoulder. Sam's rolled onto the other side of the bed, with his good arm over his chest, and his hand on his heart. She scoots closer to him, but the line of his side against her back isn't enough contact. She bites her lip, then looks to Dean again.

"This is gonna sound weird," she says. "Like, really fucking weird."

"Pretty sure Sam and I used up the weird quota for the month," he says. "I bet it's not even a big deal."

Jess laughs, because it feels like it should be, but she remembers Dean's arm around her, while he helped her out into the car. It had been good, something solid and certain when nothing else was, and she wants it again.

"Can you come sleep with us?" she asks, and feels simultaneously like a child trying to climb in her parent's bed during a storm, and like an adult scouting for a threesome.

Dean nods, though, and crosses the space between their beds. Jess holds up the sheets for him and he climbs in next to her, sandwiching — _sandwiching_ , her mind repeats — her between himself and Sam. She's still wearing Sam's shirt, more like a dress on her, and just a pair of panties, but no matter how Dean had leered at her the night he broke into their apartment, he keeps his hands to himself, tucking one under the pillow and resting the other by his chest. Jess sighs, smiling a little, and bends her legs further, so she can press the soles of her feet to Sam's leg and her knees to Dean's.

"Thanks," she says, and closes her eyes. "He's just sort of — out of it, and I didn't want to be the only one awake over here."

"M'awake," Sam slurs from behind her. He rolls onto his side and tucks his arm around her waist again. It brushes his hand up against Dean, and he hesitates for a moment before relaxing further, pushing her closer to his brother. "Hey, man."

"Hey Sammy," Dean says, and grins, wrinkling up the skin around his eyes. "You doing alright?"

"Got all my favorite people in bed with me," he says, smile audible in his voice. "Could be doing a hell of a lot worse."

Jess laughs. "You are stoned."

"Nah, it's wearing off. Definitely beats the past few days, though." Sam kisses the back of her neck, scraping his teeth over her skin and making her arch, trying to get away and get more at the same time. Dean moves onto the pillow as well, studying Jess's face, and she knows her mouth's hanging open, but she can't manage to close it. He moves a little closer, brushing their noses together, just as Sam closes his mouth over her neck and starts to suck, and Jess gasps as she gets wet, a hot fast rush in her panties.

Sam nips at her again and Jess jerks, moving against both him and Dean. She's still holding Dean's gaze and he licks his lips as he puts one hand on her knee. He just keeps it there, but he's warm, and his hand feels just as big as Sam's always do, just like the one Sam is working under her — his — shirt.

"Guys," she says — not either of their names, because she doesn't want to single them out, and not _stop_ , because she doesn't want that, either. But they're _brothers_ , something that seems enormous even to her, an only child. "Guys, what?"

"You okay with this?" Sam asks. He shifts up closer to her, and he must be right, the drugs must be most of the way out of his system, because she can feel his dick, hard against her ass.

"Sam, I —" She twists a little to look at him; it pushes her legs further against Dean, and his hand an inch or so away from her knee and onto her thigh, and she shivers. Sam's looking at her lucidly, like he knows exactly what he's doing.

He kisses her, then pulls back a little. "We don't have to. It's not a big deal."

Jess laughs, because everything that's happened over the past few days has been a big deal, but also because it's just what Dean told her. She leans even further to kiss Sam again, sucking at his bottom lip, and it's not the first time they've kissed since they were at home, but it's the first one that turns her on instead of just calming her down.

Dean's kept quiet and still, and Jess turns back to him, frowning a little. He shrugs, twisting his mouth up into a smile, and Jess holds his gaze while she leans in and kisses him.

It's strange: he smells different than Sam, tastes different than him, but they kiss the same way, taking her bottom lip between both of his and sucking at it. It's just the way Sam kissed her for the first time, and Jess reaches out, putting one hand on his warm, bare chest, while she kisses him back. Dean scoots forward, coming to join the two of them, and Jess rearranges her legs, sliding one over Dean's thighs and pushing the other backwards between Sam's.

"Have you two done this before?" she asks, mostly talking into Dean's mouth. They both pause for a second, and Jess rolls onto her back so she can peer at each of them. They're looking at each other instead of her, and Jess is certain, for a moment, that they're going to say yes, that they have.

But then Dean laughs, and shakes his head. "Nah, this is our first threesome with one of our girlfriends," he says, laughing.

"Mostly because Dean is too immature to actually have had a girlfriend," Sam says, and nudges his nose against Jess's cheek. It occurs to her that they've still dodged the question, but she drapes her legs over them anyway, so she can feel each of their dicks hard against her. She hitches her shirt up, so it pools around her waist instead of around her thighs, and she closes her eyes as, one after the other, they slide their hands under her shirt.

She tries not to pay attention to who's doing what, but she can't ignore it completely — it's Dean who rolls on top of her first, sliding both his hands up her thighs and then just hooking the wet crotch of her underwear out of the way, and so it's Sam who stays next to her, working a hand between them to rub at her clit. And then, after Dean's come once and she has a few times, it's Sam she settles on top of. She starts off leaning back, putting on a little bit of a show for them both, but winds up with her elbows braced on either side of Sam's head in the end, kissing him until he jerks and comes.

She gets out of bed afterwards and goes to rinse herself clean. It feels like she's sticky from the waist down, and she pees for good measure, then drinks a glass of water. She looks at herself in the mirror, the first time she's really done so in days, and she barely recognizes herself. Her hair's a mess, more frizz than curls, and the sleep she'd gotten that night wasn't enough to do anything about the dark circles under her eyes. She feels about the same, though; if she's honest, she feels better than before she got into bed.

Sam and Dean are curled around each other when she comes back to bed. She pauses in the bathroom doorway, and they're not kissing, but they're sharing a pillow, talking quietly. She remembers that they haven't seen each other in years, and she hesitates for a moment, until Sam looks up and holds a hand, his injured arm, out to her. She turns off the light and climbs back between them, and they're all three still touching when she falls asleep.

.

 _Jess had watched, standing by the door, as Dean pulled and bullied and practically carried Sam into the car. He was the most banged up, so it made sense for him to go first, but Jess waited on the balls of her feet. She had the straps to their bags, hers and Sam's, in her hands, but she couldn't shake the fear that they'd drive off without her, that Dean would leave her here with a body no one could explain._

He came back, though, leaving Sam in the back seat and running back up to the apartment. Jess came outside, locked the door behind herself, and then slung one bag over her shoulders. She carried the other in her hands, and Dean took it from her when they met up. He wrapped his arm around her and hurried her towards the car.

"Keep your head down," he'd said, even while he was looking all around them. "Everyone probably knows who you are around here, but it can't hurt."

She'd nodded and gone where he pointed them, right towards the car. He popped the trunk and tossed his bag in, then took hers and nodded towards the back seat. "Get in," he said. "And fast."

So she'd climbed in with Sam, cradling his head in her lap and trying to figure out a way to get them both buckled up, while the engine roared its way to life. Dean pulled away from the curb quickly, and Jess craned her head to look behind her, as they left the apartment, her entire life except for Sam, behind her.

"Did all that really just happen?" she asked, once the building really was out of sight, and she'd turned to the front again.

"Hate to say, but yeah, every last bit of it." Dean looked in the rearview mirror for a moment and met her gaze, then went back to the road.

"And, Brady? Is he really dead?"

Dean nodded, and she closed her eyes. "He'd been dead for a long time, I think. Nothing we did tonight could have changed that."

"But —"

"That wasn't actually Brady," Dean said. "That was a demon, and he'd probably been a demon for a long time. The —" Dean had paused here, and shaken his head. "His body had been dead for a while."

Jess shook her head. "That doesn't — no. That's not possible."

"Was any of what just happened possible?" Dean asked.

She looked down at Sam in her lap, at the burn he'd gotten from a fire that appeared and then disappeared with no logic at all, that had happened while she was stuck to the ceiling. "I guess not," she muttered, more to herself than to Dean, and looked out the window as they ran out of town.

.

Dean is already out of bed when Jess wakes up in the morning, and she can smell coffee brewing. She's sore, she discovers, as she tries to get up without rousing Sam — she doubts she manages it, knowing what she does now about the way they grew up, but he at least pretends to stay asleep. Maybe the drugs are still working, after all. The shirt she'd worn the night before is still on the floor, where she'd tossed it, and she pulls it back on, as well as a pair of someone's boxers.

Jess pads through to the kitchen and smiles a little as she finds herself a mug. She checks the fridge, and there's not a carton of cow's milk in there, much less the non-fat vanilla soy milk she likes in her first cup of coffee for the day. She at least finds a few packets of Sweet'N Low in a drawer and adds one to the coffee, then carries the mug with her through the house.

She doesn't know where she's going, or even what she's looking for, but she finds a door leading outside, to what she guesses is the back yard, and opens it. There's a porch looking over a scruffy yard, and there isn't any furniture, but Dean's sitting on the steps, wearing what looks like the same outfit he had on yesterday. He doesn't look to see who it is, but pats the step next to him. Jess goes, letting the door bang quietly closed after her, and sits with him. It's cold out, with no pants on, and she tucks her legs into the shirt and leans against Dean, letting him put his arm around her.

"If you ask me if I'm alright," she says, "I swear to god, I will pour this on you."

Dean snorts and glances down at her mug. "Wasn't planning on it."

She drinks and nods. "Damn straight."

He laughs and pulls her a little tighter to himself, kisses the side of her head. Jess ducks her face and smiles into the mug, then takes a sip and looks up again. The sun's starting to come up, colors peeking over the edges of the salvage yard, and it would almost be nice, if she could just forget why she's here to see it.

The door opens behind them. Dean doesn't look but Jess does, and finds Sam there. He's wearing the bathrobe she bought him for Christmas the year before, which Dean had apparently packed, and he has his own cup of coffee. She sucks at the inside of her cheek, suddenly uncertain about whether or not last night was supposed to be a one-time thing — they're going to have to talk about it, awesome — but Sam smiles at her, just like any morning, and comes to sit on her other side. He kisses her temple and puts his spare arm behind her. It must nudge his fingers up against Dean, just the way Dean must be touching Sam's shoulder as well as hers, but neither of them moves.

"So," Jess says, and swings her legs over towards Sam, trying to balance her weight between the two of them, "what do we do now?"

"You know how to shoot?" Dean asks, without looking at her.

She shakes her head.

"That should probably be first," Sam says, and he does duck his head to meet her gaze. "You good with that?"

A week ago, she wouldn't have been, but now, the idea's not so bad. "Yeah."

"Cool," Sam says. He leans into her a little, pushing her further towards Dean for a moment before she can take his weight. "But coffee now."

Jess shakes her head, but they're warm on either side of her. She isn't sure what comes next: how long they'll be here, or where they'll go next, or how she's supposed to live knowing demons are real, and at least one is trying to kill her. Sam and Dean know this life, though, and whatever does happen from here, she'll need them to teach her. Maybe sitting here, the three of them tucked up together, is actually the first step.


End file.
